View full sizeUrsula Coyote/AMCWalt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) are back in action in Season 5 of "Breaking Bad," which debuts Sunday night.

On one hand, we should be grateful. There are so many TV series, past and present, that are deserving of our time and attention, it's impossible to make time for them all.

But that overflowing fountain of TV goodness sometimes feels like a fire hose. Friends shower you with recommendations. Critics gush superlatives. Before you know it, you're drowning in guilt over having not seen every episode of every season of everything.

All of which I offer as my all-wet excuse for having waited until just a few weeks ago to watch "Breaking Bad," which begins its fifth and final season Sunday night. When the AMC series started, back in 2008, nothing about it reached out to make me want to watch. It starred Bryan Cranston, whom up until that point I thought of as the comically doofy dad on "Malcolm in the Middle." The promotional art featured Cranston standing by an RV in the desert, clad only in a rumpled shirt and his tighty-whities. I knew and admired creator Vince Gilligan's work as a producer and writer on "The X-Files." But the "Breaking Bad" combination of deliberately provocative images, the unlikely casting of Cranston, and the info that it involved a high school chemistry teacher whose cancer diagnosis inspires him to start making meth all conspired to make me think: I'll pass.

But then came the cascades of praise from those helpful friends, critics and givers of awards. When Cranston won the Emmy for best lead actor in a drama series in 2008, 2009 and again in 2010, I started to get a little irritated at him for beating out Jon Hamm in "Mad Men" time and again. How great could he be?

Now I know. Thanks to a smartly timed AMC marathon of the previous four seasons, leading up to Sunday's Season 5 premiere, I've become a "Breaking Bad" convert-come-lately. And I wonder how I ever managed to get along without it.

As with the best TV, "Breaking Bad" draws you into a fully created world, one populated by characters who are both familiar and exceptional. As loyal viewers already know, it's the story of Walter White (Cranston), whom we meet as an Albuquerque, N.M., high school chemistry teacher. He learns he has lung cancer, and the prognosis isn't promising. Walt is married, his wife is expecting their second child, and their teenage son has cerebral palsy. Walt feels trapped -- he wants to provide for his family, and needs to cover his medical expenses.

So, in a desperately ill-advised move, Walt joins forces with one of his former, lackluster students, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and they start cooking methamphetamine. That decision sets in motion one of the most amazing trajectories in TV history. Every choice Walt makes has consequences, and the stakes just keep getting higher.

As Season 5 begins -- and if you haven't caught up on previous seasons, you may want to stop reading now -- the Walt we first knew is gone. The low-key chemistry teacher has become utterly transformed. He's now a drug kingpin, willing to do anything to protect himself and his interests. The old Walt, who had seemingly made his peace with his modest middle-class life, now can't give up the power and money that comes with being the best meth cook in the Southwest. It's been an astonishing progression, and Cranston has made this most jaw-dropping of character journeys utterly convincing.

By this point, "Breaking Bad" has shown us layers in the illegal drug trade -- ruined addicts who crave the product, Mexican cartels that profit from it, business-minded bosses who oversee production and distribution. It's horrifying and fascinating to watch the story play out in the brutal desert sun, tidy houses and blandly tacky strip malls of Albuquerque.

If Cranston is the engine that drives the narrative, the uniformly excellent cast brings the rest of the characters to complex life. As Jesse, Paul finds both tragedy and comedy in the young man who still calls his former teacher "Mr. White." Equally fine are Dean Norris as Walt's DEA agent brother-in-law; Betsy Brandt as his sister-in-law; RJ Mitte as Walter Jr.; and Bob Odenkirk as the sublimely sleazy storefront lawyer, Saul Goodman. And as Walt's wife, Skyler, Anna Gunn has steered her character on a course nearly as unpredictable as Walt's. Once she learned about her husband's drug-making sideline, Skyler adapted, in a morally dubious but expedient manner.

The most chilling moment in the season opener is a scene between Walt and Skyler, in which he lets her know that he has taken care of getting his former employer, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), out of the way.

In her voice, you hear Skyler's fear about what comes next. With all that has happened already, the idea that Skyler can still be frightened by Walt, and what the future holds, makes the blood run cold.

But it makes the return of "Breaking Bad" even more welcome.

The Week's TV Highlights:

"Leverage": Season 5 begins, and well, looky there -- the team's now based in Portland. (8 p.m., Sunday, TNT)

"Breaking Bad": The first half of the fifth and final season begins (the last eight episodes are scheduled to air in 2013). (10 p.m., Sunday, AMC)

"Political Animals": Sigourney Weaver stars as Elaine Barrish Hammond, wife of a former president, unsuccessful presidential candidate and now secretary of state. Greg Berlanti ("Brother and Sisters"), who created this short-run series, says Weaver's not channeling Hillary Clinton, but there sure are similarities. If only the drama was as compelling as real-life, instead of over-the-top. (10 p.m., Sunday, USA)

"History Detectives": In the Season 10 debut of the series co-produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, the history detectives try to find out if an electric guitar is the one Bob Dylan played on the fateful night he "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. (9 p.m. Tuesday, PBS/10)

"Project Runway": It's also the 10th anniversary season for the fashion design competition. There are no Portland designers this time around, but Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia will be around to make it work. (9 p.m. Thursday, Lifetime)